Ray Winstone: 5 Awesome Performances and 5 That Sucked

...and 5 That Sucked.

5. 44 Inch Chest (2009)

Though the failure of 44 Inch Chest can hardly be deemed Winstone's fault - nor the fault of any of the other actors - it's still a performance completely stifled and denied its potential, thanks to the underwhelming script. It's clearly a film built for actors, unfolding like a play as Colin (Winstone) discovers that his wife has been unfaithful, and then has his buddies pick up the young lothario. However, Winstone along with other supremely talented actors like John Hurt, Ian McShane and Tom Wilkinson, struggle to tread water against the tide of a clichéd screenplay which recycles a lot of genre tropes, and also endures tonal shifts, failing to meld its comic and less-savoury elements together particularly well. Previous roles suggest that Winstone is perfectly capable of playing a reflexive brand of gangster, but any attempts here to satirise the forced machismo involved with gangster culture fall flat, and thus Winstone is left to awkwardly try and make more of the script than is really possible. Sure, he still has the imposing presence, but the flimsy direction, failing to make the play-like format visually appealing, does him no favours at all.